Zynga has many other games as of this writing in this same format and using the same structure. Alas I could not take any more excitement. So I jump straight to the game Zynga seems to put the most time and money into and that seems to be the most popular - Farmville. And why not at last estimate (April or thereabouts) Farmville had an estimated 80 million people playing it worldwide. Think about that is 9 New Yorks. THat is the entire population of the coutry of Germany. Needless to say employers are up in arms about employees playing it on their time and people have claimed addiction much like the WarCrack games.
Premise:
You are a farmer. You plow the field, plant the crop, harvest the crop. You add things to your farm, expand it, visit neighbors farms and partake in monthly collection contests.
Game status:
Beta (aren't they all?)
Game play
Yeah you guessed it : Clickety Click Click. Recruit players. Spend real world money for in game decorations and perks.
Technical
Of all the games of this design this seems to be the smoothest running. Yes things still disappear from the gift boxes. Yes it is still a HOG and graphics take forever to load sometimes so that your farm looks partly green and partly white space. Yes the moving of the toon from one place to another is INCREDIBLY slow and tedious, so much so that most players have trapped the spawn point. Yet people seem to like this game.
Appeal
I am not certain WHAT the appeal is, perhaps the ability to do virtually nothing except click, move up the ladder of your friends and watch the crops grow?
So now that I have taken all I can of the clickety click I can stand I would like to point out that Before Farmville there were other apps on Facebook that basically did the same thing. So I put it you readers to explain, Why is Farmville more appealing than MyFarm or any other sim like game? Why is it now included on xfire? Something I once thought was a semi-reputable gaming site. Anyone? Is anyone reading or is it time to harvest your soybeans?
Showing posts with label Zynga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zynga. Show all posts
24 July 2010
22 July 2010
Cafe World - Needs more Spice
Now for the one that was tied with Fishville for next to last. The reason Fishville won was basically lousy coding and poor communication as well as being the last of the games Zynga Games of that design to update to code to match the others. This one is just damn slow and stupid.
Premise:
You own a Cafe, you cook dishes sell them and people eat them. The more you sell the more profit you make, the more profit the bigger the Cafe can be. You can and make dishes and hire more employees. Oh wait this is sort of like Fishville Oh well.
Gameplay
Clickety click click. Click on stove to select recipe click on stove 3 more times to 'add ingredients (all hard coded, no choices here), click on the stove to serve the dish, click on the stove to clean it, click on the stove to repeat. - Ho Hum. Unless of course you get the special stoves by either recruiting an army of friends and begging them for stuff or paying Cafe Dollars (Yep bought with RW money) The it is just clickety click. Faster Ho Hum. Oh and can anyone tell me why it takes 9 hours or more to make eggs sunny side up. Denny's would be out of business if their short order cooks took that long!
Technical
It takes FOREVER to load. It is nice the little green bar shows that it is loading greenstuff (whatever that is) but why does the game run in the background? People get up come in leave, wait, but the player can do nothing until game load is complete. I thought the purpose of a game was for someone to play it, not for it to play itself. Here is an idea, stop eating up the ram by having the toons do stuff and use it to load stuff faster. Things disappear from the gift boxes, special features to be completes hang about and the graphics load is awful. For example, the floor in a cafe done with 2 different tiles alternating loads one set of tiles then about 3 minutes later (No exaggeration : it timed in at 2:53.). Last but not least down time seems to be frequent with suggestions to play from the Zynga site or another of their games instead (which is probably down too.)
So All in all this is just another beta that IS a beta (unlike Fishville or Treasure Isle which seem to be in alpha stages.) If you are into clicking and voyeurism this is for you, If however you are a gamer looking for a time fill on your lunch break, try solitare.
Premise:
You own a Cafe, you cook dishes sell them and people eat them. The more you sell the more profit you make, the more profit the bigger the Cafe can be. You can and make dishes and hire more employees. Oh wait this is sort of like Fishville Oh well.
Gameplay
Clickety click click. Click on stove to select recipe click on stove 3 more times to 'add ingredients (all hard coded, no choices here), click on the stove to serve the dish, click on the stove to clean it, click on the stove to repeat. - Ho Hum. Unless of course you get the special stoves by either recruiting an army of friends and begging them for stuff or paying Cafe Dollars (Yep bought with RW money) The it is just clickety click. Faster Ho Hum. Oh and can anyone tell me why it takes 9 hours or more to make eggs sunny side up. Denny's would be out of business if their short order cooks took that long!
Technical
It takes FOREVER to load. It is nice the little green bar shows that it is loading greenstuff (whatever that is) but why does the game run in the background? People get up come in leave, wait, but the player can do nothing until game load is complete. I thought the purpose of a game was for someone to play it, not for it to play itself. Here is an idea, stop eating up the ram by having the toons do stuff and use it to load stuff faster. Things disappear from the gift boxes, special features to be completes hang about and the graphics load is awful. For example, the floor in a cafe done with 2 different tiles alternating loads one set of tiles then about 3 minutes later (No exaggeration : it timed in at 2:53.). Last but not least down time seems to be frequent with suggestions to play from the Zynga site or another of their games instead (which is probably down too.)
So All in all this is just another beta that IS a beta (unlike Fishville or Treasure Isle which seem to be in alpha stages.) If you are into clicking and voyeurism this is for you, If however you are a gamer looking for a time fill on your lunch break, try solitare.
21 July 2010
Fishville Fry
It took a while for me to decide what the next worst game in the Zynga pool is. I have come to the conclusion it is Fishville Ok so maybe it is stress management thing. THEY say aquariums are relaxing. I maintain THEY either want to sell you more stuff or never actually ran one, but it is relaxing to watch. This game however is anything but relaxing.
Premise:
Again the premise is about as difficult as any on the Neopets site or any other kid's site, only this is for adults?? Basically you raise sell and keep some fish.and decorate the tank. Watch the fish grow, fight the fish, feed the fish, watch the fish die if you forget to feed them.
So you have your aquarium and you can chose some gravel and backgrounds for free or pay RW money to get some others. Then you do the same with fish and decorations. Surprise surprise. The next step is ts to drop the fish eggs - if they work that is and of course recruit neighbors to play because well you know this is a game that REALLY requires a multi-player environment. You feed your fish and then come back when they say to feed them again. Rinse, repeat till full grown then either keep or sell. Oh and you get mastery points for each sale as well as money and .. well if you read the previous blog you know how it works, only instead of digging you feed fish.
Now for the exciting difference! You can fight your fish! Yep just like the arena in Neopets only not. There is no actually live interaction involved. You click say fight pick an opponent. You win or lose based on stats only and that is it.
Next comes the visiting neighbor's tanks and feeding their fish. And of course yours.
Game play:
Clickety Click Click once in a while you may click and drag something.
Technical
First when you mouse over or click on a fish it should tell you how long till next feeding - except their 13 hours must be equal to my 5. And sometimes the fish return to their same level of hunger. Perhaps they have sustain cast on them? The game takes a long time to load, some items do not work, others disappear after placing or on the way to the gift box. Fishville seems to be the red-headed stepchild. It gets the updates LAST if at all. This may be due to it's lack of profitability or due to other issues. I do not care, I do care that it seems that they want me to pay for a game that they do not maintain at the same level that they do others in the look and feel.
While we are on the subject of paying ALL these games have BETA on the splash screen. Most sane people will NOT pay to be BETA tester, It used to be beta testers were paid or at least given a free copy of whatever it was they were testing.
Zynga games seem to come in two basic formats the * Wars one or the *ville one. All have the same basic look and feel. There is very little strategy or even mathematical prowess required for Fishville. So, if you want to wade through a boring game with lots of non functioning functions be my guest. Perhaps it will ease your stress.
Premise:
Again the premise is about as difficult as any on the Neopets site or any other kid's site, only this is for adults?? Basically you raise sell and keep some fish.and decorate the tank. Watch the fish grow, fight the fish, feed the fish, watch the fish die if you forget to feed them.
So you have your aquarium and you can chose some gravel and backgrounds for free or pay RW money to get some others. Then you do the same with fish and decorations. Surprise surprise. The next step is ts to drop the fish eggs - if they work that is and of course recruit neighbors to play because well you know
Now for the exciting difference! You can fight your fish! Yep just like the arena in Neopets only not. There is no actually live interaction involved. You click say fight pick an opponent. You win or lose based on stats only and that is it.
Next comes the visiting neighbor's tanks and feeding their fish. And of course yours.
Game play:
Clickety Click Click once in a while you may click and drag something.
Technical
First when you mouse over or click on a fish it should tell you how long till next feeding - except their 13 hours must be equal to my 5. And sometimes the fish return to their same level of hunger. Perhaps they have sustain cast on them? The game takes a long time to load, some items do not work, others disappear after placing or on the way to the gift box. Fishville seems to be the red-headed stepchild. It gets the updates LAST if at all. This may be due to it's lack of profitability or due to other issues. I do not care, I do care that it seems that they want me to pay for a game that they do not maintain at the same level that they do others in the look and feel.
While we are on the subject of paying ALL these games have BETA on the splash screen. Most sane people will NOT pay to be BETA tester, It used to be beta testers were paid or at least given a free copy of whatever it was they were testing.
Zynga games seem to come in two basic formats the * Wars one or the *ville one. All have the same basic look and feel. There is very little strategy or even mathematical prowess required for Fishville. So, if you want to wade through a boring game with lots of non functioning functions be my guest. Perhaps it will ease your stress.
30 May 2010
Zynga - the new Amway
Once in a while I step back from MUDDING, console games and PC games and look at what is considered casual gaming. Zynga has lately been one of the names that is splashed all over such games - much as EPIC and IGN was in the past. They have become a staple of social sites such as MySpace and Facebook and have developed (I use that term loosely) multiple Flash games. Yet they leave something to be desired as a game developer. Perhaps it is a sense that gamers or even coders are developing the games instead of the accounting department. So over the next few weeks I shall take each Zynga game and critique it here - starting at the bottom.
Ah what IS the bottom - that is a good question. There are several games that vie for this position in my mind in the Zynga list of games. I think though Treasure Island maybe the winner. You begin this game on your own island with a hut. a shovel and little garden plot in which to grow fruit. Oh and a gem tree which grows a certain color of gem.
The basic game premise is that you travel to islands on a map and dig to find treasure. Each island has 3 treasure collection types hidden on it. Each collection contains 5 items to collect. The idea is that digging uses energy and returns fruit, experience points,a treasure chest, a special or nothing. Eating fruit restores a certain percentage of energy. Gaining a level restores it all and increases the max. So you click on a picture of a map, click on an island on the map, click on a spot on the island and watch your basic low grade toon go through some lame animation. Tinse and repeat till out of energy, eat fruit, go again.
Not boring enough for you? But wait there is more! See you can travel to friends' islands click on a button to chase off sea gulls or clean it or something and gain xp. Then get a gem from their tree. They may have a different color gem tree and this becomes important because you NEED these gems to unlock Tiki heads to gain access to certain parts of some of the islands. How exciting! Of course this means you must recruit friends to play the game and they have to agree to be your neighbors.
So what is the problem with this game other than the Ho Hum factor? Well, first if you do not have enough friends who cannot sleep at night and need something tedious to do, you are unlikely to get the gems needed to proceed. Unless you purchase, find or earn 'Island Cash' see Island cash is used for in game items. Like most Zynga games this is a lame excuse to get real world money out of its players.
As if that were not enough, the collections are so few that the RNG for any collection chest discovered returns the same items over and over. Figure 21 chests on an island 15 possible items to fill 3 collections, so why do i get 6 of the same
two items OFTEN and few of the others even to the point of obtaining NONE of one of the collections? Perhaps they are all behind the Tikis i cannot unlock because most of MY gaming friends have at least some taste
The final thing that makes this the bottom of the list, other than the stereotyping of islands and their dwellers, is just lazy coding. Performance is awful. Why does EVERY Zynga game kick my fan off into high on my machine? It is not like any real processing or even hardcore graphics are going on. I think most of the artists at Zynga use children's coloring books as templates for items and characters. Why can't pop ups for actions wait their turn? Why do they interfere with each other? And most of all I want to know why it is you can track how long since a neighbor logged in but cannot return a different message than you have already collected this from this neighbor today. How difficult is it to make another object to return upon that if statement? here let me GIVE you logic zynga -
Check neighbor gem counter //max number of gems that by be collected from island
Check last neighbor login //last login of island owner
Check PC obtained time //date and time of last gem obtained from this island by pc
Check
on command get gem from basket
secure pc
IF neighbor login > 24 hours //island owner not played in over a day
return "Sorry your neighbor.name has not been around to harvest any gems. Suggest
neighbor.name come play with you on Treasure Island."
goto fail
IF neighbor gems <= 0 // max gems distributed
return "Sorry, neighbor.name's gems have all been claimed."
IF pc obtained time gem <= 24 hours //player got one from here already today
return "Return later you already got a gem from this basket today."
ELSE //valid collection condition
PC gems = pc gems +1
neighbor.gem counter -1
PC obtained time reset to server time
endif
FAIL
unsecure pc
end
Ok sort of messy psuedo code but when a game is about the intelligence level of a 3rd grader on a site that requires you be 13 or older to have an account. I figure there is a serious lack of basic understanding of logic in the coding team. Even Neopets has more exciting games than this and they are MEANT for kids. So as far as casual gaming goes this one FAILS.
Ah what IS the bottom - that is a good question. There are several games that vie for this position in my mind in the Zynga list of games. I think though Treasure Island maybe the winner. You begin this game on your own island with a hut. a shovel and little garden plot in which to grow fruit. Oh and a gem tree which grows a certain color of gem.
The basic game premise is that you travel to islands on a map and dig to find treasure. Each island has 3 treasure collection types hidden on it. Each collection contains 5 items to collect. The idea is that digging uses energy and returns fruit, experience points,a treasure chest, a special or nothing. Eating fruit restores a certain percentage of energy. Gaining a level restores it all and increases the max. So you click on a picture of a map, click on an island on the map, click on a spot on the island and watch your basic low grade toon go through some lame animation. Tinse and repeat till out of energy, eat fruit, go again.
Not boring enough for you? But wait there is more! See you can travel to friends' islands click on a button to chase off sea gulls or clean it or something and gain xp. Then get a gem from their tree. They may have a different color gem tree and this becomes important because you NEED these gems to unlock Tiki heads to gain access to certain parts of some of the islands. How exciting! Of course this means you must recruit friends to play the game and they have to agree to be your neighbors.
So what is the problem with this game other than the Ho Hum factor? Well, first if you do not have enough friends who cannot sleep at night and need something tedious to do, you are unlikely to get the gems needed to proceed. Unless you purchase, find or earn 'Island Cash' see Island cash is used for in game items. Like most Zynga games this is a lame excuse to get real world money out of its players.
As if that were not enough, the collections are so few that the RNG for any collection chest discovered returns the same items over and over. Figure 21 chests on an island 15 possible items to fill 3 collections, so why do i get 6 of the same
two items OFTEN and few of the others even to the point of obtaining NONE of one of the collections? Perhaps they are all behind the Tikis i cannot unlock because most of MY gaming friends have at least some taste
The final thing that makes this the bottom of the list, other than the stereotyping of islands and their dwellers, is just lazy coding. Performance is awful. Why does EVERY Zynga game kick my fan off into high on my machine? It is not like any real processing or even hardcore graphics are going on. I think most of the artists at Zynga use children's coloring books as templates for items and characters. Why can't pop ups for actions wait their turn? Why do they interfere with each other? And most of all I want to know why it is you can track how long since a neighbor logged in but cannot return a different message than you have already collected this from this neighbor today. How difficult is it to make another object to return upon that if statement? here let me GIVE you logic zynga -
Check neighbor gem counter //max number of gems that by be collected from island
Check last neighbor login //last login of island owner
Check PC obtained time //date and time of last gem obtained from this island by pc
Check
on command get gem from basket
secure pc
IF neighbor login > 24 hours //island owner not played in over a day
return "Sorry your neighbor.name has not been around to harvest any gems. Suggest
neighbor.name come play with you on Treasure Island."
goto fail
IF neighbor gems <= 0 // max gems distributed
return "Sorry, neighbor.name's gems have all been claimed."
IF pc obtained time gem <= 24 hours //player got one from here already today
return "Return later you already got a gem from this basket today."
ELSE //valid collection condition
PC gems = pc gems +1
neighbor.gem counter -1
PC obtained time reset to server time
endif
FAIL
unsecure pc
end
Ok sort of messy psuedo code but when a game is about the intelligence level of a 3rd grader on a site that requires you be 13 or older to have an account. I figure there is a serious lack of basic understanding of logic in the coding team. Even Neopets has more exciting games than this and they are MEANT for kids. So as far as casual gaming goes this one FAILS.
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